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Christianity Today

Well, it took 18 hours, but Christian leaders are now beginning to decry Mark Galli, the editorial writer for Christianity Today who so strongly wrote the article saying that Donald Trump needs to be removed from office. Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, the founder of Christianity Today, says that his father would not have agreed with that editorial. Other Christian Evangelical leaders have now echoed somethng similar, rallying to their president and decrying one of their own.

They would rather believe their lying president than a truth-teller among their own ranks.

But for 12 to 18 wonderful hours, it was good to see the Radical Right so gloriously bitch-slapped by the truth.

The impeachment vote from the House of Representatives last Wednesday did not sting Trump all that much. Trump knows Mitch McConnell will do whatever he says, regardless of moral code, regardless of Constitutional duty. Just ask Merrick Garland. But the editorial from Christianity Today certainly stung. Trump knows where his power base lies. He knows the radical Christians are his strongest supporters. He also knows that as long as he appoints hyper-conservative judges who are dedicated to putting prayer back in public schools, putting crosses back on public land, and overturning Roe v. Wade, he is utterly safe from any, and I mean ANY, wrongdoing.

But sometimes, even his strongest supporters balk. It's that bad. In the case of Christianity Today, the editor cited the lessons learned during the Clinton impeachment, when conservatives said over and over again that moral integrity matters, and that it was important to stand for ethical behavior. Christianity Today's editors, or at least one of them, have decided that it is wrong to side with an immoral person to achieve moral ends.

In other words, the ends do not justify the means anymore.

My take on all this? It was worth it. The impeachment shenanagins (and by shenanagins I mean those on the Republican side), the lies (again, one-sided on the Right), the grandstanding by professional conservatives on repeating long-since debunked falsehoods, they were all worth the seemingly endless toil just to have this one, small editorial that so deeply stung the president, and forced the FoxNews zombies to look at reality - for fucking once.


Even if it were all fake, it would have been worth it.

But, of course, it wasn't.


Eric

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Poll Dancing

Two weeks ago, Fox News and every other conservative news outlet was doing a victory dance regarding a Rasmussen poll which showed approval for Trump skyrocketing to 35% among African Americans. There was zero hesitation in pronouncing that this foretold of doom for Democrats in 2020, and that liberals had to seriously re-think their strategies. CNN commentators immediately decried the poll as inaccurate. Anna Navarro Cardenas, a Republican commentator on CNN, notably said, "Zero chance this is accurate." Her comment was immediately decried by Fox, One America News, and other outlets as "typical liberal media bias." Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity could barely contain their excitement.

Rasmussen is often cited by right-wing news because it skews results in favor of Republican candidates. Thus, when other polls typically show an approval rating among African Americans for Donald Trump to be around 10%, Rasmussen shows it typically around 25%. So a report that shows approval among black Americans at 35% should have indicated a spike in approval rating in general. But was this accurate, or merely an outlier? Another poll by Emerson University seemed to show similar results, and Fox took this as gospel. Now, a "fair and balanced" news organization such as the one Fox News claims to be, would have reported these as a potential outliers, and advised that further results need to be obtained before any conclusions could be drawn. They might also have pointed out that, even if real, this could be only a temporary spike in approval among African Americans, spurred in large part by Trump's comments about the horrible state of the inner city. Naturally, they did not say either of these things, instead reporting that Trump was definitely gaining support among the black American voting population.

Well, surprise, surprise, reality has brought this biased reporting back down to a crash-landing on planet Earth. A YouGov poll released yesterday shows African Americans who strongly approve of Donald Trump to be merely 5%, and those that somewhat approve of Trump to be 8%, giving Trump a whopping 13%. Slightly higher than the usual 10%, but not by much. Rasmussen's poll crashed back down to its usual mid-25% range. And to top it off, a new poll, released by none other than Fox News itself, confirms this with 24%. Even Fox couldn't get the results higher than Rasmussen's 25% range.

To add insult to injury, the same poll shows increased support for Trump's impeachment, with 50% of respondents saying that Trump should be impeached and removed from office, and only 41% saying he should not be impeached at all.

So, will Fox News, One America, The Epoch Times, Newsday, Limbaugh or Hannity apologize for getting things so obviously wrong?

I'm betting not.


Eric

*

The Formula

Ever notice how very little news on conservative news outlets is actually news? I mean, today's headlines on Foxnews.com features the following line items on its politics tab:

Trump attending Army Navy game in Pasadena - tertiary.
Trump attacks Schumer after Schumer says that the U.S. sold out on China trade deal - reporting on someone else's opinions.
Illegal immigrants to get drivers' licenses after court case loss - interesting choice of emphasis.
Trump supporter grabs spotlight at Sanders rally by protesting - again, odd choice of emphasis.
Eric Trump's daughter makes debut on Fox News - big deal.
Eric Trump says impeachment is a hail mary - opinion.
Rep. McCarthy says imeachment puts 55 Democrats in vulnerable spot - opinion.
Candace Owens and Corey Lewandowski lend their perspective - opinion.
Kellyanne Conway on impeachment - opinion.
Anti-impeachment Rep. Jeff Drew met with Trump to discuss party switch. - Emphasis.
Eric Shawn on whether or not impeachment will hurt or help Trump - opinion.

Basically, half of all the "news" stories reported on Fox News are all opinion pieces. The other half are unimportant items or strange choices to emphasize. Carolina Trump, being the president's newest granddaughter, making a TV debut as a baby while her daddy makes commentary is an interesting tidbit, but hardly important. Reporting Trump's attacks is reporting the news, but how is over-emphasizing Trump's tweets a responsible thing anymore? And the Trump supporter at the Sanders rally? Honestly, who cares?

But this is the formula for Fox News: Don't actually report the news. Instead, report the opinion. If it's not a news piece featuring someone else's opinion, it's a news piece that reports the story, and then kicks it over to a panel of talking heads, all of whom give their opinion. Not a one of these is anything other than a Trump sycophant, and so the news gets broken down in the most biased manner possible.

Shit, it's amazing how little news in on Fox News!

But the formula is clear: Report as little news as possible. When news must be reported, emphasize the stories that favor your side. When the stories don't favor your side (or even if they do) kick the story over to a panel which will discuss it in the most conservative light possible.

And this formula WORKS when it comes to deceiving people! Fox News knows perfectly well that people are too busy to really get into the weeds on technical details. People are busy with jobs, with kids, with a hundred other things, and they don't have time to really research. So, to feel informed, they watch what the pundits are saying. If they see all three pundits saying that the impeachment of Donald Trump is a big hoax, they assume that it must be a hoax! After all, nobody is dissenting, right?

This is part of why we need a return to the Fairness Doctrine like we need oxygen! The news being presented in one-sided format has gone on long enough!

Oh, there's bias on the other side, too. Today's viewing of CNN.com has a lineup of much more substantive headlines. Like reporting how thousands of troops will be recalled from Afghanistan. Or how the Supreme Court will be taking up the case regarding Trump's tax returns.Here, at least, you get a lot more of the information you NEED to know. But it also emphasizes comments by Lindsey Graham saying that he's not even trying to be fair when it comes to Trump's impeachment. That's a fair bit of reporting, but it's no mystery why it got top billing on the website. It also features a story about Melania Trump ignoring how her husband has been bullying Greta Thornburg, after Melania made anti-bullying her First-Lady pet-project. Okay, the hypocrisy is stark, but so also is the emphasis.

Meanwhile, MSNBC doesn't even bother having a staff putting news stories in print form on its website. It emphasized the videos, and many of them criticize Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham for so bluntly admitting that they will not even bother trying to be objective regardint Trump's impeachment trial. Again, a fair bit of reporting, but no mystery as to why it was pushed to the front page.

The Left may be slanted, but the Right has gotten outright blatant in its lies, pushing conspiracy theories and outright bullshit. For example, Judge Jeanine cannot even say the word "impeachment" without sounding as though she's putting the word in quotes, as I just did. And when one compares the number of substantive political news stories on CNN with those on Fox News, one can't help but notice how CNN has so much more information that Fox has.

So what does Fox have that's so popular? It has confirmation bias.

I'll be documenting plenty more examples of this as I continue to find them...

But it's disquieting how I don't need to look very hard.


Eric

*

"I Want Nothing!" Oh, But You Did!

By now, you've probably heard Trump's defense that the conservative media has grasped onto. Gordon Sondland dropped a bombshell on the White House last Wednesday, testifying that, in no uncertain terms, Trump did offer a quid pro quo to Ukraine. And furthermore, said Sondland, everybody knew it.

Now, Sondland has been a major Trump supporter, both in terms of money and vocal support. He is the ambassador to the European Union, which has an official partnership with Ukraine (even though Ukraine is not an E.U. member). He was right in the middle of the scandal, and therefore had first-hand knowledge of everything that was going on.

In other words, once and for all, this is not a "hoax," nor is this a "witch hunt." Let's put that one to bed once and for all.

The first thing conservatives did was ask for written proof. Sondland had lots of documents in the form of his own personal emails, but did not have the State Department documents to back him up. Those, interestingly, are sealed. So when Sondland was questioned by Steve Castor as to whether or not he had any proof, Sondland could only provide his own recollections, and admitted presumptions about what Trump and Rudy Giuliani wanted.

Republicans have seized upon this as proof that there's no "there" there. But let's look at that more closely: If what Sondland was saying was wrong, and his testimony was incorrect, then logically that would mean that he was doing his job incorrectly based on an incorrect presumption. For months, nobody said anything about it, and no Republicans voiced any objections until the day Sondland testified. That's incompetence on a grand scale, not only by Trump, but by ALL his State Department underlings! It would be cause to fire not only Trump, but everyone in the State Department!

OR, Trump is guilty. That's it. Those are your only two logical choices.

Now, the so-called "liberal media" has not reported this. But let's continue, because there's more.

Following Trump's eccentric lead, they are arguing that Trump outright told Gordon Sondland that he "wanted nothing from Ukraine," in a phone call on September 9th.

But wait, September 9th? Isn't that the SAME DAY that the whistleblower complaint was delivered to the House Intelligence Committee? Indeed it was! You can confirm that on the timeline provided by factcheck.org.

So that means Trump told Sondland he wanted nothing from Ukraine after the fact! Trump was walking it back at that point because he knew he'd been caught!

And his statement that he "wanted nothing" does not exonerate him. Rather, it proves he's guilty!

Has the "liberal media" reported this? Well, once in the New York Times, but that seems to be about it. For the sake of journalistic integrity, all news sources, left and right, should be reporting the living hell out of this. But they're not.

Fox News handled this the way Fox News typically handles things: by reporting what the president said, and then leaving it at that. Then they kicked it over to the sycophant commetators who parrot Trump's position without question. Only Justice Napolitano pointed out the truth, but by now Fox News viewers have written him off.

Under-reporting the news is the same as reporting biased news. Because Fox knows you, the viewer, will come to the conclusion they set up for you when they only tell half the story - the half they prefer to tell.

Eric

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Hannity Blows It Again

Sometimes, they make it too easy.

Last Wednesday, ahead of the impeachment inquiry hearings, Sean Hannity tried to take Democrats down a peg or two by saying that they have done nothing for America except go after Donald Trump.

This is so empirically false, it's amusing. They passed the renewal of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. The Senate passed it as well, and the president signed it, but only after Jon Stewart brow-beat Republicans into doing so. Then there's the 'For the People Act of 2019, H.R. 1, Equality Act, H.R. 5, H.R.7: Paycheck Fairness Act, H.R. 8: Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, H.R. 9: Climate Action Now Act, (Relating to a national emergency declared by the President on February 15, 2019) (H.J.Res. 46, Vetoed March 15, 2019), Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal, H.Res. 109, H.R. 150: Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency Act of 2019 (GREAT Act), H.Res.411: No More Presidential Wars Act, H.R. 662: REACH Act, H.R. 899: To terminate the Department of Education (interesting, perhaps better no Department than one run by Betsy DeVos?), H.R. 1585: Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019, SAFE Banking Act of 2019, H.R. 1595, H.R. 1644: Save the Internet Act of 2019, Taxpayer First Act of 2019, H.R. 1957, H.R. 2107: Affordable College Textbook Act, Well-Informed, Scientific, & Efficient Government Act (WISE Government Act)...

And all that simply cut and pasted from Wikipedia. It was that simple to find.

I mean, Jesus, Hannity! Can you even do an Internet search on Google?


Eric

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Dumb Strzok? Or Dumb Article?

It took me 0 seconds to find political bias on Fox News today. It is interesting how this has become so blatant, and so frequent, that anyone can find this sort of thing immediately, and without trying.

The article I found, headlined on foxnews.com, dealt with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was fired for having classified information on his personal phone, and for having an affair with a staff member. What makes the article so interestingly biased, is the fast that the article emphasizes one particular detail. Here's the opening paragraph:

"The Department of Justice released documents Monday outlining a slew of "security violations" and flagrantly "unprofessional conduct" by anti-Trump ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok -- including his alleged practice of keeping sensitive FBI documents on his unsecured personal electronic devices, even as his wife gained access to his cell phone and discovered evidence that he was having an affair with former FBI attorney Lisa Page."

Now, many people in government are "anti-Trump." Quite a few, in fact, have recently been in Trump's administration, and have left saying that Trump is an idiot. People like Reince Priebus, Anthony Scaramucci, John Kelly, John Bolton, Hope Hicks, and the list goes on. So it's not unusual for any given FBI person, or former FBI in this case, to have a negative opinion about Donald Trump. But this article LEADS with that fact. And in doing so, it strongly implies that those who oppose Trump are just as dirty as this particular ex-agent whose sloppy security breeches and extramarital affair got him into trouble.

Now, objectively, it should be obvious that Strzok's personal feelings about Trump are entirely separate from the misdeeds for which he was fired. It should also be obvious that there are plenty of Trump supporters who are just as dirty, and are currently sitting in jail or are awaiting jail. Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulos, and recently Roger Stone, among others.

Fox News is bluntly trying to say, "See? There are some crooked anti-Trumpers, too!"

Maybe so, but doesn't it look a little desperate to make your headline story of the day be one about a sloppy FBI agent who couldn't keep his fly zipped?

The bias of Fox News is not always blatant. Sometimes it is subtle. This time it wasn't so subtle, but it was subliminal. We are not meant to notice that Strzok's irrelevant anti-Trump stance is mentioned right away. We are not meant to be conscious of how this flavors perspective against those with an anti-Trump stance. And we are not meant to notice how, further down in the article, mention is made about leaks from the FBI in the Trump administration, and how this implicates that Strzok may be one of the leakers. For all we know, he might be, but it is not keeping with journalistic integrity to imply such a thing without evidence.


Eric

*

The New Sacred Cow Wursthaus Mission

I've been doing this blog a long time. I've written a lot of screeds and vented a lot of my frustrations, both political and non-political. But now I need to decide what I'm going to do with this blog going forward. It seems married life has left me with less time to write, but I do wish to keep going.

Currently, I'm contemplating making a run for the 17th district of the Wisconsin State Assembly. I probably won't win, but I'm feeling the absolute need to seize the microphone in a way which goes beyond what this blog has been able to give me. I need to actually let my voice be heard for once.

As such, most of what I write in this blog going forward will be detailing the errors, lies and deceit of conservative media. The more I look at what's happening, the more I realize that support for Trump and the madness that so-called "conservatism" has descended into, can all be tied to the fact that a large percentage of our nation's citizens are being lied to. And not just lied to, but blatently and bluntly lied to. There is no distinction anymore between tabloid journalism and journalism. There is no journalistic integrity. It's all Oligarch Network News, and the Information Age has turned into the Misinformation Age.

So when I'm out there pointing this out, the victims of this network of lies will undoubtedly ask for proof. I will give them this blog, together with all of my past profanity, my past mistakes, and my bared soul. It will have one example after another, for days on end, and for the months going forward, of lies, lies and more lies, together with the proof of same. Will it be enough to convince a few sheep to leave the fold? Will it force the wolf to take off his woolen disguise? I don't know. But I'm willing to try.

Brace yourself, Fox News. Look out, Breitbart. I'm aiming at you.


Eric

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500 Scientists Deny Global Warming? Not!

With all the hoopla surrounding Greta Thunberg and her passionate address to the U.N., did you happen to see, in your social media feed perhaps, a link to an odd news story which said something like, "500 Scientists Write U.N.: 'There Is No Climate Emergency.'"? Op-Ed-Disguised-As-News organizations such as Breitbart made sure this headline got lots of undeserved exposure.

Except 500 scientists didn't write to the U.N.

Oh, there was a letter to the U.N., all right. You can read it here. https://clintel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ecd-letter-to-un.pdf But the headline was dead wrong. It wasn't 500 scientists. Get past the headline, and it becomes "500 scientists and professionals."

Well, shit, it's bait-and-switch right from the start.

But it doesn't stop there. The letter actually has only 14 actual signatories. These signers are the ringleaders of an organization called the European Climate Declaration, which in turn is headed by the Amsterdam-based Climate Intelligence Foundation, or CLINTEL. They claim to represent 500 people based on a networked list, but as we shall see, that list is dubious. Their leader is a man named Guus Berkhout, who is a scientist from the Netherlands. What is he a scientist of? Why, oil and gas exploration, of course. That takes the wind out of the sails right there.

But wait, there's more! I mean - less. The list of scientists is unimpressive. You can find it here:
https://clintel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ED-brochureversieNWA4.pdf


There are 506 people on the list, not counting the leaders. But of those, most are engineers, field chemists, computer techs and some self-appointed "experts" as well. What a letdown.

Oh, there are a few impressive names. A few are retired people from NASA, for instance. But for the most part, these are the blue-collar non-researchers who make up the grunts of a former science team, not the actual experts themselves.

The leader of the U.S. contingent is a guy named Richard Lindzen, who is usually at the top of every list of climate-change-denying scientists. For whatever reason, climate change denial has a real foothold among meteorologists, and Lindzen is one of them. He's rallied people to his cause in the U.S., but not many. The number of signatories on CLINTEL's list who are from the U.S. is a measly 45 people. Given such resources for advertisement as Fox News, it's amazing that he got only 44 other people. Maybe next time he shouled put out a call for signatories on the Mark Levin radio show.

The only name on the list which stands out is Freeman Dyson. This highly acclaimed scientist at Princeton is well known among science fiction fans for coming up with the "Dyson Sphere," which is a structure surrounding a star to harvest every single photon of energy. But why would he sign this document? The answer is, he didn't. In fact, most of the "signatories" were only represented by the 14 who actually signed the U.N. letter.

Dyson was involved with CLINTEL in the past, but hasn't had much involvement with them since 2009. He openly acknowledges the reality of anthropogenic climate change, he only questions the scale of certain projections. So his name being included on this list is dubious at best. It indicates that this list is a growing compilation of people who were ever associated with this organization, even remotely, at least once, and that, my friends, is called fudging the numbers.

Even with over-inflating and over-estimating the numbers like this, the list is only a little over 500. That may seem like a lot, and indeed, some media outlets have been reporting that such a high number indicates that denial of global warming is not limited to a few fringe scientists. But remember, this list was slapped together from 23 countries in total. If you can draw from that many countries, it isn't difficult to get 500 people on just about any topic, from denying the holocaust to insisting that Americans never landed on the moon in 1969. Get the minority tin-foil hats from that many countries, and you'll always get several hundred. I'm actually surprised that this group only got 500 people. They should realistically have gotten more with such a broad base to draw upon.

So there you have it. Once again some backwater mavericks who happen to have PhD's they can't do anything with due to their ruined reputations have made a career for themselves by deliberately muddying the water. These are the same sort of people (and sometimes even the VERY same people!) who repeatedly told us such whoppers as, "Cigarettes don't necessarily cause cancer!" And, "CFC's aren't really eroding the ozone layer!" Or, remember this one? "Lead in gasoline is not a significant neurotoxin." That one still amazes me! "DDT is harmless to children."

These sort of backwater shits have been wrong before. They'll be wrong again. And they're wrong now.

Pull me once, shame on you. Pull me several times....

...and I'm a Rush Limbaugh fan!


Eric

*

Trump At 50%? Not Really.

Looks like there's a new poll out by Rasmussen, and it shows Donald Trump's approval numbers are at 50%. For those of us who actually follow the news, this seems impossible. Who the hell are these prairie dogs who pop up out of their holes and signal approval for Trump before disappearing?

Furthermore, the Fox spin on this is that this improvement in poll numbers stems from his opposition to the four female congresswomen (the ones nicknamed "The Squad") he recently insulted, telling them to go back home. In a horrendous rally in Greenville, North Carolina, an energized crowd chanted "Send her back! Send her back!" drawing comparisons to the 2016 chant of "Lock her up!" According to Fox, this opposition

The president agrees with this spin, arguing in yet another insane Tweet that "The Squad's" opposition to him has backfired, and that he's not backing down.

Really?

Well, Real Clear Politics can shed some light and provide some sanity. First of all, the Rasmussen poll does not show 50%. Rather, it shows a tie of 49% to 49%, meaning that 2% of poll responders were undecided, and Trump still hasn't reached that magic "50" yet. But that's a technicality. The real insight comes from other polls done concurrently.

The same day the Rasmussen poll came out, Gallup released its own poll. Trump's approval rating was 44% approve, 51% disapprove.
Reuters/Ipsos released another poll that same day. Trump's approval rating was 44%. His disapproval rating was 54%.
One day prior, that is on July 17th, Politico/Morning Consult released a poll. Trump's approval numbers were only 40%. Disapproval rating was 56%.
Also on the 17th, The Economist/You Gov released it's poll. Trump's approval came in at 46%, and his disapproval stood at 51%.

In other words, Trump's numbers haven't really changed all that much. He's still around 45% approval, and can't really climb much higher than that.

Among the polls released this week, only Gallup's was done over all of July. The others polled people between the 15th and the 16th, or from the 15th through the 17th.

Rasmussen polled from the 15th through the 17th.

In other words, what happened at the rally on the 17th couldn't have significantly improved Trump's poll numbers because it hadn't happened yet!

Yes, the fracas with "The Squad" happened days before, but that didn't seem to change Trump's overall poll numbers one way or the other. This time, Rasmussen is an outlier. An exception. A black swan.

Yes, it's true that Trump's overall polling average is slowly, slowly improving. But the latest polling data comes in under the wire. Saying Trump's poll numbers are up because of this is a bald-faced LIE.

What will really indicate the effect of this will be the poll numbers which follow. If next week's polls show improvement for Trump, Fox News might have an argument.

I'm willing to bet they'll go down.


Eric

*

How To Guarantee Trump's Downfall

Every so often, I have a true stroke of brilliance. Yes, it's arrogant of me to say so, but I think it's warranted. I'll share my stroke of brilliance with you, and you can judge for yourself if you agree with me.

A man who has recently made the news again is a historian named Allan Lichtman. He pops up before every election, claiming to have successfully predicted the previous 8 or 9 elections or so. A closer look at his methods reveals that he's not quite so successful as he claims. He predicted Al Gore would win in 2000, and was wrong. He also called Donald Trump as the winner for 2016, but got cold feet and backpedaled right before the actual election. So he's not quite so confident in his methods as he advertises. Still, he's a media darling, and in these uncertain times, many love to hear bold predictions from a prophet. Even a bad one.

Lichtman's method is to measure 13 factors, and if the presidential candidate is favored in 8 of them, that candidate will win. Some of them are subjective, but some are clearly not. Two of the ones which are not subjective are short-term and long-term economic stability. It is those I wish to focus upon.

Those of us who know anything about economics recognize that Trump is ruining a perfectly good economic boom. He's taking the good momentum left to him from the Obama era and ruining it. Of course, it takes years for such ruining to be felt by the public, so we're not quite feeling all of it yet. In fact, any capitalist system is quite capable of continuously running well, and can take quite a beating before a real downturn happens. In 2008, it took an unexpected and massive housing-value collapse to bring the economy down, and even then, it bounced back after only three years. This has allowed Trump to falsely claim that he's been doing a good job with the economy. But, of course, his mismanagement will be felt sooner or later. Economists of all stripes are predicting a recession, but many of them are divided as to whether it will hit by 2020, or 2021.

If the downturn hits in 2020, Trump is out. If it hits in 2021, he might just win re-election.

And here is my stroke of brilliance. You see, the unspoken X-factor of an economy comes in the form of uncertainty. Economic uncertainty makes for a troubled market. Stocks are more jittery. Prices don't come down as readily. People cling to their wallets more tightly. Uncertainty is really the thing which drives an economy down. In the 1970's, economic uncertainty, caused mainly by OPEC driving gasoline prices up, made many people nervous, and inflation went way up. But today, Trump has let the unemployment rate slip below 4%, and inflation has not taken place. Why? Because markets feel certain. They are confident that the markets will remain predictable.

And here's where we all can topple Trump in a subtle, beautiful way.

We create more economic uncertainty!

How, you ask? By expressing worry about the economic future. By pointing out, quite correctly, that farmers are suffering; that Wisconsin is no longer the dairy state because dairy farms are selling out at the alarming rate of 2 farms per day; that one-fourth of last year's entire cranberry crop had to be simply dumped because farmers couldn't sell it; that Harley Davidson will soon be a European motorcycle company; that steel tariffs will drive the prices up for everything with steel as part of their manufacture.

It's really not lying. We have the above reasons and many more when it comes to worrying about the economy! But the more we talk about it, the more we express ourselves in worrying, the more we generate buzz about the coming downturn, the more it will happen. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy!

And the inevitable economic downturn will happen in 2020, not 2021, and Trump will be out in one of the biggest losses in American history!

After all, Trump has been pinning his entire re-election campaign on the economy. If it falters by November of 2020, he's got nothing.

So chat it up on social media, everybody! Express your worry about the economy on Facebook, for so you should! Tweet doom and gloom, an end to the economic boom! Generate word of mouth that the economy's going South! There's an economic storm coming, and it's name is Hurricane Donald! Be paranoid! Be LOUD about it! Worry, worry WORRY!

Hell, you're going to worry anyway. You might as well make it count.


Eric

*

My Cartoons

Lately, I've taken up doing little cartoons to express myself. I hope you enjoy.

Super Bowl Commercials

I had a real blast watching the Super Bowl commercials this year. As usual, it was the only time of year advertising agencies actually do their jobs and give us new commercials, and as usual, they don’t take the lesson that maybe they should put new ads in front of our eyes more often, instead of subjecting us to the same shit over and over, as if repetition alone would make us buy their product. But I’ll get off that soap box briefly to make an entirely different observation:

Did anybody else notice an interesting pattern with automobile ads? Foreign auto makers Audi, Mercedes and Hyundai all had great ads promoting – cars. Yes, cars. That thing that General Motors says there isn’t a market for. But yes, there IS a market, and these auto makers know that with GM, Ford, Chrysler and other American players getting out of the game, there’s going to be a much bigger market share – for them. And they’re trying to get in on it. So, their ads come (where else?) on the biggest ad market of them all: The Super Bowl.

Hyundai may have come up with the best of them, with Jason Bateman being an elevator conductor (as if they have those, anymore), announcing one bad thing after another with each descending floor. Near the bottom, is buying a new car, except the passengers announce that they used Hyundai’s Shopper Assurance app and website. Rest assured, that one is going to be shown over and over during baseball season. Because again, ad agencies think their job is done making new ads after the Super Bowl.

Toyota had two spots: One featured Toni Harris, the first woman ever to win a football scholarship. And the product they compared her to? The new Rav-4 hybrid. That’s right, a more electric SUV. Toyota realized that there is a market both for size AND fuel efficiency. And once again, it’s poising itself to corner the market when the next gas crisis hits.

The other Toyota spot advertised the return of the Toyota Supra. Discontinued after 1998, it’s making a return with some help from BMW. Why? To appeal to sportscar drivers who also want greater fuel efficiency. Fewer cars on the market means that a few people might want to opt for a sportier model out of what’s left. Toyota knows that many people would opt for quality and durability as well as flash.

Budweiser may have had the most ecologically friendly ads of the game, with at least three spots touting the fact that Budweiser is not made with corn syrup, long known to be an inferior source of bad sugars. But then they also came out with an ad that showed the Budweiser beer wagon, pulled by its iconic Clydesdales, through a field of windmills. A dalmatian riding atop, along with Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” playing in the background, helped emphasize the brewer’s point: that its product is now made with wind power. No market for ecologically friendly products like small cars, eh?

But the most interesting ad may have come from Kia. They spent their millions unveiling the new Kia Telluride, an SUV. And why is Kia, traditionally known for making small, affordable cars, suddenly interested in getting into the SUV market? The answer should be obvious: Because they expect GM to fail again. And that means the market will fall to those companies which remain. Kia feels its best move is to have its own SUV on the market, should GM shut down.

I don’t know if the Board of Directors at GM was paying attention to the Super Bowl this year, but if they were, they should be extremely nervous.

And they should bring back manufacture of cars, before it’s too late.

Eric

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Dude, Where's My Car?

It was reported awhile back that American car manufacturers, particularly GM, will be discontinuing the manufacture of cars to concentrate on SUV's. The reason, they say, is because there just isn't enough of a market for small cars. Fuel prices are low, and consumers simply want pickups and SUV's instead.

Bullshit. The executives are looking at projections based on stability. And historically, that has never, ever been the case. Sooner or later, something disrupts the oil supply, and gas prices shoot up. It's happened once or twice every decade in my lifetime. Apparently, being in a boardroom wipes an executive's memory.

We all remember what happened when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Fuel prices shot up. General Motors and other American vehicle manufacturers had backed themselves into a corner regarding the SUV back then, too. The result? Well, because New Orleans was an oil hub, and much of that surrounding area was responsible for fuel refinery, the gasoline supply was disrupted and fuel prices went way up. Consumers later accused the oil industry of price-gouging because they recorded record profits, but that was no conspiracy on the industry's part. Low supply, high demand, prices shoot up, scarcity forces overhead into being low. It's basic economics.

Toyota made a killing on the disaster because it had come out with one of the first hybrid cars, the Toyota Prius. Almost overnight, consumers backlogged orders on these little cars, and the waiting list stretched to over a year or more. GM and Ford had gambled on SUV's ruling forever - and lost.

Adding insult to injury was the decimation of one of the best electric cars ever made at the time: the EV-1. Consumers who drove it raved about it when it debuted in 1996. By 1999, it had a loyal following of fans who loved it. But the oil industry and the auto industry conspired to destroy this little upstart competitor, and succeeded. They managed to get the car offered only for lease, so consumers couldn't buy one. Then they dared complain about lack of demand, as if leasing a vehicle wasn't always a scam. They fought California's emissions standards tooth and toenail. And they argued, then as now, that there isn't a market for such small cars.

Well, consumers revolted, protested, raised a hue and cry over their soon-to-be lost electric cars, and even staged a mock funeral as a publicity stunt. It all went ignored, and the EV-1 was taken off the market, and the entire model was repossessed and crushed for recycling. Only a few collectors were allowed to keep them, and then only if key components were removed, rendering their engines dead.

Fuck you, GM.

In the late 60's and early 70's, when OPEC choked off the oil supply to the U.S. over the political crisis in Israel, the company that made the biggest killing was Volkswagen. Why? Because it manufactured the Beetle, a little fuel-efficient car that suddenly consumers demanded. GM, Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler were all building over-sized sedans as their smallest vehicles. A car with six or eight cylinders was the industry standard. They were totally unprepared for a market that suddenly demanded fuel efficiency, and basic vehicles with little or no trunk space.

How many times must we see this happen before companies learn?

The gasoline crisis caused by Hurricane Katrina was barely past its heyday when the housing bubble collapsed in 2008, and the mismanagement of GM nearly destroyed the entire company. Uncle Sam had to bail it out, and even then many free-market economists argued against doing so. Had it kept the EV-1 in production, it would have made a killing, and been the most powerful auto-maker in the country, possibly the world! Over and over it has been proven that manufacture of small, fuel-efficient cars provided a hedge against the inevitable times of economic hardship and high fuel prices. That's why it has always been so very critical to keep those cars in production, even during times when they are produced at a slight loss.

Because at the drop of a hat, gas prices can suddenly go up, and then those little cars save the company's ass!

Now we're seeing this same mistake all over again. The Chevy Volt, a car which I desperately covet, is going off the market soon. (Fuck you again, GM!) While other companies are improving their electric and hybrid vehicles, and Tesla is proving that there is (and was!) a sustainable market, GM, Ford and others are hanging up their production of cars.

Okay, Chinese tariffs aren't helping. The inability to sell as much oil overseas is causing a glut of oil here at home. But all that does is force more oil down our throats at a time when we ought to be selling what's left of our tar sands and oil shale abroad. Driving SUV's is literally burning tomorrow to pay for today.

If only I could be assured that the low-fuel product I and so many others demand will be met with the supply we deserve.


Eric

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